Stop comforting other people for your own grief

17 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt from Hope Edelman's YouTube conversation, Hope and Speaker A discuss the difficulty of responding to expressions of sympathy after losing a mother at a young age. They reflect on how saying "I'm sorry" often forces the speaker to shift focus to their own feelings, leading to awkward or dismissive replies. Hope shares her own experience of losing her mother Marsha at 42 and how she now acknowledges both her adult self and her 17‑year‑old self when hearing condolences. Speaker A reveals their mother died at 50, noting the lingering impact of early maternal loss. The dialogue highlights intergenerational grief, the challenge of navigating condolences, and a shift toward honoring past selves in the grieving process.

When you lose a mother this young, and, you know, even when I say it at the age of 55 now, someone will say, I'm so sorry. And then I go, oh, it's okay. They don't know what to say. I don't know what it is. And I've been like that my whole life. Do you find that? Do you find that you don't know how to respond to that? By now I do.
But I meet a lot of women who don't know what to say because when someone says, I'm sorry, they are suddenly platforming their feelings. And we feel like we need to respond to that by saying, it's okay, don't be upset. It was a long time ago. I'm okay now. Now when someone says, oh, I'm sorry, I I say, me too. You too. I'm not sorry just for the adult that I am today only. I'm sorry for the 17-year-old who lost her mom, but I'm also sorry for the mother, my mother, Marsha, who died at 42. So young. How old was your mom?
50 years old.
So younger than you are now. You've passed her age.
That's a huge transition.
Yes. Yeah.